Delighted to see that the 111 Years of Graphic Design from GF Smith exhibition is coming to University of Ulster. For less than a day really though so get it into your diary: it starts on the evening of Thursday 15th but will be packed away around midday the next day (talk about pop-up!). By all accounts it should be pretty amazing. GF Smith clearly have a long history of commissioning superb graphic design; the exhibition includes material from the likes of Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Bill McKay and SEA Design. Not one to miss.

Then, the following week, SEA Design's Bryan Edmondson (SEA) will be giving a talk (on Thursday 22nd April 2010).

Martin from A Sound Awareness dropped me a line recently which made me go digging around his very interesting blog. And I stumbled across these images by Bernard Voïta. A little more poking and prodding elsewhere lead me to conclude that Bernard is a man shrouded in mystery. As Damien Correll on It's Nice That puts it, "The Internet knows very little about Swiss-born Bernard Voita. Trust me, I’ve looked". So if anyone knows anything - absolutely anything - perhaps you could let one of use know.

The March edition of Stack dropped through the door this week, with content that couldn't be more appealing. Ever since the demise of the tragically short-lived men's food magazine EatSoup I've hankered for something to fill the gap. So the Manzine/Fire & Knives-combo speaks to me loudly and clearly.

Fire & Knives is beautifully design by Anorak's Rob Lowe and edited by food journo' and broadcaster Tim Hayward. With writers that have been published in the likes of GQ, the Guardian and The Telegraph it's not surprising that it's top-quality nosh writing inside, "The freedom given to the writers shines through as they are allowed to elaborate on any theme or subject that interests them…", says Stack's Steve Watson.

What Manzine lacks in beauty it makes up for with a print of Ralph Steadman's "Grumpy Festival Man", an article on the World Dryer Model A, Design Classic No.3: The Tree and an infographic illustrating the spread of facial hair amongst current world leaders. It's a self-consciously crap piece of magazine design and all the better for it. Contributers are of a similar standard to F&K, with pedigrees in Esquire, GQ, Wired and Arena. And again, freedom reigns with subjects leaning towards the politically inappropriate. (When I say "leaning", I really mean, "had a skinful, fell over and landed squarely on the side of modern maledom").

I'm not a student of architecture, in the broad sense. I like buildings, what with their walls and windows and roofs and stuff, as much as anyone (well, anyone who doesn't know much about architecture); have uninformed opinions about this building or that building; like this; don't like that.

Buildings I really like tend to be brutal concrete blocks. Or, if it looks like it's from a Thunderbirds set, then I'll probably like it. Prince Charles, famously, slagged-off the public library in my home city of Birmingham. One of his monstrous carbuncles…actually what he really said was that it looked like, "…a place for burning books, [rather] than keeping them" (which is a pretty funny crack). But I like it. I suppose if you spend your days fopping around a grandiose pile you're unlikely to be that excited by concrete.

I, on the other hand, with my more humble background, disagree with his outspoken, architecto-Royalness. I like it. And I like the rear end of the Ulster Museum (pictured here and here) as well.

Atto do beautiful stuff. I think Pete will be presenting a new, improved version of a talk he did at Refresh Belfast last year. I wasn't there but have heard it was great. Actually, to be honest, I don't know what Pete will be talking about. But I'm pretty sure it'll be good. Ralph will be talking about work he did with the Manchester brewery JW Lees. Who were nearing closure before he helped turn things around; saving their bacon (fries) and, crucially, their livelihoods. I've heard it makes a great case study; think it could be a really good presentation for anyone involved with a brand in any way: creative, manager or owner.

GF Smith are selling limited edition prints of photography they've used for their promotional material. John Ross's inky blobs are lovely. And I really like Lee Furnell's Flowers. Not sure about Rankin's stuff though. (If I was Tweeting this I might have added a #whataloadofshite hash tag to that last bit. But I'm not. So I won't.)

Hot on the heals of Volume 56 comes 58 with some more amazing content. Including a great piece by F H K Henrion on the rationalization of papers and inks (accompanied by pages from his catalogue for Simplex Piling); a facsimile copy of Werkman's The Next Call 9; some excellent and detailed stuff on map design; and a superb fold-out promo for a (then) new-fangled typeface called "Univers" (it'll never catch on).